


Let It Be Yesterday, Or Tomorrow

by walkydeads



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Canonical Character Death, Climbing Class, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Groundhog Day, M/M, Slow Build, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkydeads/pseuds/walkydeads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>chris gets stuck in a time loop, experiencing the events of the game over and over again. he feels like it’s his responsibility to save everyone, but josh keeps slipping through his fingers. (i love pain apparently)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It Be Yesterday, Or Tomorrow

The first time Chris wakes up, he’s not sure what to believe.

‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ plays, something Josh though would be hilarious to set as his alarm their junior year of high school that Chris never bothered to change. 

Josh…

Chris tries not to think about it as he reaches over and turns his alarm off, but on closer inspection of his phone, he realizes it’s the day they’re supposed to leave for the trip. Some tension leaves his body and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, chokes on a relieved sob.

It must have just been a nightmare.

All the elements of a nightmare are certainly there. The level of terror is inconsistent, the source is inconsistent, and it only features people he already knows. The dream also seems to be pushing him and Ashley together, which seems like something he’d do to himself subconsciously, if for no other reason than a desire for normalcy. And it makes him the sole survivor of this massacre on top of the mountain, which surely speaks to his ego on some level, because he’d never actually live to the end of a horror movie.

So when he packs up and heads off to the mountains, he doesn’t really think twice about it. Maybe he wears a different outfit just to be sure, and maybe he’s a little quieter than he remembers being in the dream, but he still goes. And he doesn’t try to get in touch with Josh or anyone else beforehand, convinced whoever he might tell would just call him a crybaby. He does his best to just shrug it off and have a good time.

All he knows he doesn’t want to be the sole survivor of this bullshit ever again.

Things go a bit different from what he remembers.

Matt and Mike don’t fight this time, Chris impulsively tries (and fails) to save Josh when posed with the choice between him and Ashley, even knowing the consequence. When later posed with a choice between shooting himself or Ashley, he calmly pulls the trigger in Ashley’s direction, knowing it won’t fire. Chris himself… doesn’t make it until the end of the night. So he never knows for sure what happens with everyone else. He knows Ashley, who locked him out and was pretty much responsible for his death, probably survived, and he’s okay with that. He would probably be pissed in her position, knowing someone would pull a buzzsaw and a gun on him if for no other apparent reason than self-preservation.

But he still - to his horror - wakes up the next morning, jumping out of bed and gripping his throat, making sure all the bits and pieces were still there while Wham sings in the background. When he calms down, he rifles through all the drawers until he finds a small composition notebook, and writes ‘THIS IS NOT A DREAM’ on the cover in sharpie. With shaking hands, he writes down everything he remembers from the two previous nights. He calls Josh once, but he doesn’t pick up. With shaky hands, Chris packs his things and heads to the mountain again.

As the night goes on, he scribbles something down whenever he has a chance. ‘If Matt knows about Mike and Emily talking, he’ll try to fight him’, ‘Ash doesn’t like it when I choose Josh or myself over her’, ‘What we say affects how we act later in the night’, ‘This seems random but there’s a pattern. There has to be a way to keep everyone alive’.

He catches Sam nosing around in his phone and gets annoyed, makes Jess feel like shit by outing her relationship with Mike to everyone because he’s annoyed, and blows off Ashley all night. The only person he treats with any sense of decency is Josh, and Josh seems to notice and be annoyed by it in return. He chooses to save Ashley both times, and Ashley doesn’t lock him out. From then on, he tries to keep tabs on everyone else, but he, Ashley and Sam are the only ones to make it out alive.

In the early afternoon, once the police have finally let them leave, Chris writes everything that he can remember down before bed. He’s always been a big believer in the butterfly effect, so he’s sure if he can just dissect everything calmly and patiently, he can come up with a solution that keeps everyone alive. He’s so exhausted, though, that he falls asleep sitting at his desk, trying to find a solution.

When he wakes up, it’s morning, and he’s in his bed in boxers and a t-shirt. He’s temporarily convinced his mom moved him and changed his clothes while he slept, like she used to do when he was little. This suspicion seems to be confirmed when he sees the notebook on his bedside table. But when he looks at his phone, it’s still the same day they all left for that trip, and he’s filled with a mix of relief and dread.

He reaches for the notebook, and relief wins over as he sees that all the notes he took last time are still there. If he’s going to be stuck in this loop, he decides, he might as well test everyone’s actions, and see what keeps who alive. It’s still mildly terrifying, but he can’t just lay in his bed and relieve the same day over and over for eternity. He’s got to at least try to change things. For all he knows, that’s why he’s stuck in the first place.

What should chronologically be a week later, he’s almost got it down to a science. The deaths still affect them when they happen, and he is overjoyed when he can prevent them, but he’s got it down to keeping Emily, Matt and Josh alive, so he’s gotten to the point where he can unflinchingly make or encourage decisions that may or may not be life threatening. The notebook - thank god - stays with him through it all, on his bedside every morning with his notes from that night. He goes through all the motions, encourages all the right actions as much as he can, and for the most part, sticking to what he has written down works.

Sometimes there’s an outlier; sometimes Matt still wants to fight Mike no matter what, sometimes Jess falls down the mineshaft never to be seen again, sometimes even if he feels like he’s doing the right thing, Ash stays mad at him all night. And the police very rarely even pretend to believe their stories about things with crazy teeth and sharp claws. Sometimes, even though Chris isn’t tired and uses his best judgement, he doesn’t see dawn. But despite the outliers, there’s an emerging pattern. And if he sticks to it, once he uncovers the full and proper pattern, there’s no reason anyone should have to die.

That’s why he’s stuck in this loop, he believes. To get everyone off that mountain alive. Why that falls on him, he isn’t sure. Honestly, pretty much any other guy up there with them would be more capable than him, and he only says guys because Ashley’s too meek and Emily isn’t very persuasive. Sam and Jess could probably whip anyone’s asses into doing as they said, and if anyone struck him as the hero of a hero movie, it’d definitely be Sam. And he’s definitely not her, or Josh, or Mike, or anyone stronger or bolder. But if he ever wants to escape this hell, he’s gotta try harder to be more like them. He doesn’t have time to think about why everything falls on him.

So he sucks it up, and seven more ‘days’ later, Josh is the only one he can’t save. He makes every effort, watches Josh like a hawk, stays glued to his side as much as possible, but nothing sticks. And if Josh can’t be saved, he doesn’t know why he’s still trapped, reliving this bullshit over and over again.

Technically, he knows a lot of this conflict is Josh’s fault, but he also knows - thanks to a little snooping during the downtime each night - that Josh is off his meds, Josh hasn’t been talking to anyone professionally since his sisters died. Chris knows only because he’s Josh’s best friend that he has problems that predate last year on the mountain, so he at least needs to talk to someone. And at first, Chris thinks maybe he wasn’t talking to anyone or taking any meds because he wanted to gear himself up for this big revenge plan, but ultimately he realizes that Josh just gave up. He felt powerless, and blamed himself for letting his sisters die. This whole scheme for revenge was more about his own redemption than anyone else getting hurt.

So, three technical weeks after this whole thing begins, he dials Josh’s number with shaky fingers, and calls back over and over until Josh picks up.  
“What’s up, man?” he says casually, a bit of laughter in his voice, and Chris just fucking melts, choking on another sob. After a pause, his voice comes through again, more strained, “Are you okay?”

“Josh,” he says softly, full of relief. “Josh, listen, you’re not going to like what I have to say, but I really think you should cancel the trip. I think you need to make an appointment to talk to someone. I’m really worried about you, man. I don’t think all of us going back up there is a good idea.”

“What… Chris,” Josh lowers his voice, suddenly becoming stern “I am going to therapy, you’re one of the few people that knows that. And I’ve put a lot of fucking effort into making sure everyone has a good time this weekend. Am I, like, not allowed to have a good time just because my sisters happened to bite it up there? I loved them. They’d want us to have a good time and stay friends, despite everything.”

“I just… don’t think this is a good idea,” Chris repeats, meekly.

For a few minutes, there’s silence on the other end of the line. Chris checks a couple of times to make sure Josh hasn’t hung up, but there’s also the occasional deep breath that lets him know Josh is still on the line.

“My dad put you up to this, didn’t he?” Josh says at last, his voice flat, but gaining steam as he tuned out Chris’ objections, “You know what? Fuck this. I honestly thought you had more loyalty than this, Christopher. But if you think this is such a bad idea, by all means don’t bother coming. And tell daddy fucking dearest that I’m just fine.”

The line goes dead and Chris just stares at the phone in his hands for a few minutes, typing out futile text messages before deleting them. He tries to keep his breathing calm, but at this point he knows that if he shows up, Josh will just get worse. And any attempts to pacify or patronize Josh would probably just make him even more unstable. Josh shouldn’t go tonight. Trapped in the futility of it all, he throws his phone against the wall, not even caring that the screen shatters because he knows it’ll be fine again when he wakes up.

The only problem is that he can’t sleep, and that he doesn’t have a way to reach out to anyone, or answer when the police department number flashes across his badly damaged screen in the early morning hours, and that night he fills the bathtub with water and holds himself under until his vision goes black because he can’t stand knowing what’s going to happen and he just wants to skip ahead to the part he has some control over.

Even when he wakes up with a clean slate, a mint condition phone and a bone-dry bathtub the next day, that whole ‘just laying in bed and letting the day repeat itself’ thing starts to sound more appealing. Especially now that he knows that both death at someone else’s hands and death at his own won’t free him from this loop. He reasons that he doesn’t really have anything to lose, so he makes himself take a break from the insanity and stay home. Even then, there are inconsistencies; sometimes everyone blows up his phone, sometimes just Ashley, sometimes just Josh. Sometimes Sam is the one to call him the next morning before he can fall asleep to deliver the bad news, sometimes it’s Mike, sometimes it’s Matt, sometimes it’s Ashley. And Sam’s the only one to ever really sound sad that they didn’t find Josh, or that they know he died.

Being stuck like this is really making him start to realize that he doesn’t like Ash as much as he thought he did. Or maybe simply as much as he felt like he had to, because it was what everyone expected. Something about repeatedly being asked to choose between cutting her or his best friend in half, and between shooting her or himself in the head kind of drained him of any emotion he feels for her. She’s relentlessly unforgiving when he doesn’t prioritize her, and while he can’t exactly blame her, that’s a part of her he doesn’t want to see again if he can help it.

After a few days of not going, he finally decides to go again. He wings it this time, doesn’t bring the notebook. And he’s clearly exhausted and everyone can sense that something’s off. When he catches Sam snooping through his phone, he just rolls his eyes and snatches it out of her hands. Doesn’t even bother to show her the shooting range, or tease Jess when they run into her.

He makes Josh actually chase him for a bit to knock him out and set up the whole Saw movie style trape, and even when faced with the choice between Josh and Ashley he just sits there, staring blankly ahead for a few minutes. Josh’s screaming is convincing, and Ashley’s ‘you can’t let me die’s’ fall pretty much on deaf ears. Fed up, he kicks the door separating the three of them open, which of course makes the buzz saw whir to a stop. Josh looks surprised as he catches his breath from all the theatrical yelling, and Ash looks relieved.

“I know this is a prank, Josh,” he says evenly, “And it’s honestly a really shitty one. But I understand why you’re playing it, and I’m sorry, okay? But we have bigger problems right now. That guy that was harassing your family is up here scaring the shit out of everyone, there are wolves and bears and, you know, other shit and we have got to get everyone off this mountain alive by morning, okay? I don’t want what happened to Hannah and Beth to happen to anyone else. Do you?”

Josh looks stunned, scared, and very, very upset. Even so, he simply shakes his head, loosens himself from the trap, and hops out to help Chris get Ashley down. “What the fuck, Josh?!” Ashley asks, incensed, shoving Josh as soon as her hands are free. Chris actually has to hold her back from taking another, more solid swing, “What fucking kind of joke is this? I would have actually died if he had picked you over me! Is that funny to you, honestly?”

“I rigged it so he always picks you,” Josh says quietly, unable to meet either of their eyes “I just… I wanted you guys to get together. You like each other. I just wanted to make you realize… I wouldn’t have put you in any danger.”

“Maybe not physically, but you had no problem with trying to traumatize me!”

“Hey, easy now, it’s okay,” Chris says more to Josh than to Ashley. He really can’t blame her, even if he doesn’t exactly feel like coddling her at the moment. If he hadn’t had to do the same thing over and over again for the past three weeks, he very well might have the same reaction as her. Hey knows he’s already shed more tears over the deliberation than she ever will, so her anger just kind of tires him out. “Look, I don’t know how to explain it, but I have a really bad feeling about the others. We need to get back up to the house and regroup, okay? Supposing everything is okay, we can rip each other’s throats out come morning.”

His own throat twitches in a painful remembrance at his words. But he doesn’t pay it any mind. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he’s making progress with this whole thing and he wants to see this night through.

And, with a lot of effort and pacifying everyone about what a dick Josh has been (or intended to be, which is just as bad to some), he manages to round everyone but Mike and Jess up and keep them close without having to say too much. When Mike comes running up to the front door, however, the tips of two of his fingers gone, screaming about a guy living in the nuthouse and Jessica being trapped in the mines, it all goes downhill.

Everyone wants to help, Josh especially. Chris figures he’s just trying to redeem himself, which makes sense. So, with there being very little Chris can do to persuade them otherwise, they all head to the mines. He feels a strange amount of relief when he sees the sky tinged purple around the edges. Maybe tonight’s the night. Maybe they can all actually get through this alive.

They find Jess, simply unconscious and a little bruised up, a bite mark on her leg. Mike hauls her into his arms, and they all make for the exit again, too terrified of the remaining threats to stick around and celebrate. It takes Chris a minute to register that Josh isn’t with them.

When he turns back, a part of him already knows what he’s going to see.

“Hannah?” Josh says quietly, his voice thick with emotion, “Oh my god, Hannah, how are you still okay after all this time?”

Everyone else stops and Chris is already sprinting for him, “Josh no, that’s not–!”

There’s a few strange seconds where it seems like the Hannah wendigo recognizes him, and everyone else falls quiet as they seem to realize it. Chris uses that time to backpedal, to grab the hunting rifle from Mike. “It’s empty,” Mike says hollowly, and Chris throws it to the ground cursing. By the time he makes it back to Josh, it’s too late. He’s got him by the arm, trying desperately to wrench him out of Hannah’s grip, but he can’t.

Josh’s screams are real this time, and Chris knows they’re going to haunt him long after this stops. If it ever does. For his part, he’s screaming ‘no’ and ‘please’ and Josh’s name over and over again, pulling as hard as he can.

In the end, it’s Sam that makes him let go and makes Matt and Mike help her drag him away.

“I know, I’m so sorry. Josh… Josh doesn’t deserve this,” Sam says and she’s crying, “But we have got to get out of here.”

They resurface in the near sunlight, and Chris gives Jess his jacket since she’s standing in just her bra and panties, and Mike doesn’t really have much in the way of clothing to give her himself. After a few minutes walking, Mike struggling to carry her with his various injuries, Chris kicks his shoes off and makes her put those on, too. Once he’s sure she’s okay, he hits his knees and cries, deep heavy sobs, hands spotted with Josh’s blood.

“I needed to save him,” he says, shoving his hands in the snow and watching the blood melt away with it. He stays like that until the tips of his fingers turn blue, “Why couldn’t I save him?”

“You tried,” Emily says, seemingly stunning herself with her words, “That’s more than any of us could say.”

“That asshole was crazy,” Mike says, disparagingly, and when Chris turns to glare at him, Mike holds his hands up in placation, “But we still… there was probably more we could have done?”

“Oh wow,” Chris roars, turning to advance on him, and despite Mike’s crossed arms, his eyes hold a lot of fear, and exhaustion beyond that, “You fucking think? You think after all the shit you assholes have done that you deserve any better?”

“Hey, man, I never said—”

“Stop,” Sam chastises, pointing down the mountain, where flashing blue lights were making their way up the steep path towards the house, “They’re here. We’ve gotta get down there to them.”

A lot of the morning is spent in shameful silence. Chris gives his story. They take pictures of the blood splattered up his arms and take a sample to send off to the labs, and after a couple hours, they tell him he can go home. The second he’s alone, he takes the notebook out and writes down ‘I am not sure Josh can even be saved’. He falls asleep in the car on the way home, over the noise of his mother’s nervous questions, and wakes up in his bed the morning before.

‘Maybe I can’t fix it,’ he reasons to himself as he writes in the notebook, ‘Maybe I’m stuck because I need to make peace and say my goodbyes? Maybe I need to let him go. Why is it so much harder to watch him die than the rest of them? Is it because I’ve never seen him make it to morning? Does he even want to make it to morning?" He forces himself to have a normal day. He woke up around nine, so he has a typical breakfast, works out, takes a shower, packs for the mountains (just in case) and phones Josh after he’s figured out what he’s going to say. For once, he picks up the first time around.

“What’s up, cochise?”

The voice he heard literally screaming itself to death last night now sounds so calm and relaxed that, for a moment, Chris is overcome. He tries to find words for a moment. Rehearsing before he called had been a good idea, but now he can’t remember anything he planned, and he chokes on his attempt at a casual greeting.

“Chris?” Josh says on the other end of the line, concerned, “You alright, man?”

“No,” Chris says in barely a whisper, “No, I… can you? Do you have time? Can you please come over? I’m at my mom’s, not the dorms. I don’t know what to say or do, just… please?”

It’s probably not the most cohesive way to get his desired result, but it works. “I’m already on my way, man,” Josh affirms, and Chris can hear him putting on shoes and grabbing his keys, “Do you need me to stay on the phone with you?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause, and Chris hears Josh’s car starting in the background. He curses as he turns the music back down, “You, um, do you want to talk about it? Whatever it is?”

“I don’t know how to,” Chris says, his voice still tight. This is still serious business, and it may be the only chance he has left, but he doesn’t want to cry if he can help it. He clutches his phone and plops back onto his bed.

“Alright,” Josh replies, sounding audibly concerned, and for a moment all Chris can hear is the tick of his turn signal, “Well, I’ve got you on speaker and I’m not going to hang up, so if you figure it out before I get there, you can just start talking. I’m right here.”

For now, Chris thinks.

There are a few minutes of ambient, quiet silence between them, Josh’s muttering about how terribly everyone else drives is such a familiar thing that if Chris closes his eyes he can picture himself in the passenger seat.

Then, there’s the slamming of the car door, and Chris’ mom greeting Josh at the door, sounding pleasantly surprised to see him. She asks if everything is okay, and Josh laughs nervously, saying that’s what he’s here to find out. Then, the twelve familiar steps up to the flight Chris’ room is on. The eighth step is creaky. Seven more steps, and Josh doesn’t even bother knocking.

Chris stares up at him, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed, and only when they lock eyes does Josh hang up his phone. It must be in Chris’ eyes, because Josh sits right next to him and doesn’t even try to laugh it off, he just says, “What’s wrong, man?”

And it’s so serious Chris can’t stand it, he’s choking on tears and remembering what Josh looked like without a throat even though he’s right here. He can’t find the words. The words might be the only thing that could save Josh, and Chris can’t even fucking breathe. He reaches for the composition notebook on his bedside table and presses it into Josh’s hands.

Josh, for his part, doesn’t even question it, he just examines the ‘THIS IS NOT A DREAM’ on the front for a moment before flipping it open. Carefully, he reads each page. Chris can see his eyes taking in each word, his mouth forming some of them in surprise or disbelief. Chris wipes his snot on the back of his arm and picks his t-shirt up to wipe his eyes.

It only takes a couple minutes for Josh to read everything over, since it’s been less than a chronological month since the whole thing has started, and when he closes the notebook he just sits there for another few minutes, making Chris’ skin crawl.

“Alright,” he says, quietly, “Supposing I believe one word of that, what are we supposed to do?”

“Call it off,” Chris says instantaneously, pleading, his tears still weighing down his voice, “Please, Josh, call it off. Call the whole thing off. We can all take another vacation somewhere else, but not there. I can’t… I can’t watch you die again. And I’ve done everything I know to do.”

Josh takes out his phone again, “I swear to god, Chris, if this is some elaborate design of revenge on my elaborate designs of revenge, I’m going to be really pissed.”

For the next fifteen minutes, he fields texts and phone calls from the rest of the group. “Yeah, no, I know, I’m sorry,” he tells Sam, “I was really looking forward to it, but I’m feeling under the weather and there’s a storm warning for up there. Better safe than sorry.” He laughs at something she says, and Chris catches himself wishing Josh would just hang up already. He talks to Mike and Emily, too, before finally seeming to have it all settled. Chris breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.”

“You know, this is crazy,” Josh says, with a slight shake of his head, “And if this ends up being part of an elaborate practical joke, I am seriously never going to forgive you. But a part of me really believes everything you’ve written down. If it was anybody else, I’d already be having you institutionalized myself, but there’s too much here that… no one person could know all this information. Like about Mike and Emily. I literally just found out about that. And my whole plan?”

Chris grins, despite himself, “Yeah, you’re one to talk about revenge schemes.”

“Sorry,” Josh says sheepishly, “I really need to… I don’t know I really need to start talking to someone again? It might help.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“What now?” Josh asks, “The immediate future, I mean. Not the long run. Because I would hope the long run includes us all still being alive, mainly.”

Thinking on it for a moment, Chris shrugs, “I’ve… I’ve been watching you guys die the past like twenty-something days. And it sucks and it’s terrifying and if you have a good referral I probably need to seek professional help myself, but. I just. Don’t want to let you out of my sight for the next twenty-four hours.”

To his surprise, Josh blushes, “I don’t know, I’m told I can be a little much in high doses.”

“I had to deal with you going through puberty,” Chris retorts, dryly, “I think I can handle it. How many times did you spend the night in high school again?”

“Only because you got an xbox before me,” Josh defends lamely. “But, um… seriously? That whole thing with Ashley? I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you with someone, you know? And it didn’t seem like you were ever gonna make a move on your own, so… The stuff I had planned is the stuff I always see work in movies, you know? But if the stuff you wrote about has actually happened, I… I didn’t think about that stuff happening, but I definitely see how it could, and I don’t know how you could just make it all up out of thin air, so… I’m sorry if this has somehow fucked up things between you and Ashley. I don’t think I could ever forgive myself for getting in the way of that. Of your happiness.”

“Ashley’s great, but… she never would have made me happy,” Chris says, and there’s a meaning there he doesn’t even catch until after he says it, until he watches the effect those words have on Josh, how his eyes narrow and his mouth twitches, and Chris realizes he means it exactly the same way Josh thinks he does.

“Oh,” is all Josh seems able to say, although not exactly in a discouraging way.

Suddenly, they realize they’re far too close, and Chris realizes how little time has passed since he first called Josh, and that they really need to occupy themselves, so he makes Josh come downstairs with him to see what they can get into without leaving the safety of Chris’ home.

They play video games for a while with moderate success in distracting themselves. Chris’ mom hovers for a while, which is a welcome and slightly hilarious distraction at first, until she wants to ask Josh uncomfortable questions about when he plans on going back to college and what he wants to do with his life. Chris tricks her into having a discussion with Josh about his favorite foods, making them lunch instead. After video games get boring (or too stressful, in Chris’ case) they try TV, but the horror movies and crime shows are all unsettling. They finally decide on old episodes of spongebob, and eat the grilled cheese and tomato basil soup Chris’ mom has made for them.

“This is basically seventh grade all over again,” Josh says, sounding a little too happy about it as he scarfs down his food.

“Don’t you just wish we could go back and stay in seventh grade forever?” Chris asks, voice heavy with false nostalgia.

“No,” Josh deadpans, and they both burst into laughter.

From then on, the day goes by fairly quickly. They occupy themselves with TV shows and youtube videos and occasional rounds of Call of Duty. They go back up to Chris’ room and talk for a while about nothing and watch a couple lighthearted comedies. A few times, seemingly out of nowhere, Josh will pick the composition notebook back up and hand it to Chris, asking him to explain something in more detail.

“I can’t believe what Sam had to go through,” he might say, or “I can’t believe Mike actually made friends with a fucking wolf.”

He seems to totally buy it, or at least be a very convincing actor. When Chris finally works up the nerve to ask, Josh just shrugs, “If this was real or just fevered hallucinations on your part? Or really anything like that? Doesn’t really matter. You remember the first couple weeks after… after Hannah and Beth died? How sometimes I would lose touch? You didn’t always understand, but you still rode it out with me, without asking too many questions or trying to convince me I was crazy, and I always really appreciated that. And I know, after going through that with me, you wouldn’t turn around and try to make a joke out of it, even if I was scared you would. So if you are going off the deep end, I figure the least I can do is return the favor. Not ask too many questions and just be here. I trust you for a reason, and I can’t just back out when that trust is tested.”

A sort of warmth spreads over Chris after that, a comfort he wasn’t entirely sure he was still able to feel, even as Josh jokes that if his trust is misplaced he’ll kick Chris’ ass without a second thought. They watch The Hangover, and when Chris’ eyes start to droop, Josh helps him into bed. It doesn’t seem like Josh is planning an immediate departure the second Chris loses consciousness, but Chris still clings, anyway unwilling to even think about Josh being anywhere else. He only freezed up when he feels hands on either side of his face.

“You’re still wearing your glasses,” Josh says quietly, and when the frames disappear and are replaced by Josh kissing the corners of both of his eyes, Chris is only a little surprised, but too tired to give it much thought. “Sleep.”

“Don’t go,” Chris whines, fisting his hands in Josh’s shirt as Josh wraps a blanket around them.

“I’m not,” Josh says, and then something else, too low and too warm and too close, muffled as Chris presses an ear to his still-beating heart, and finally falls into a dreamless sleep.

Hours of blissful, eventless rest, and then…

Chris goes stock still when he wakes up, sunlight pouring through his bedroom window. He burned the memory of Josh beside him in bed into his brain before he went unconscious, unable to let himself forget the time that he finally got everything right and kept everyone alive. But, apparently not, in reality. He wakes up alone, curled around nothing, the composition notebook still on his bedside table. His hands ball into fists and he he curls even more into himself, tears welling in his eyes.

“Fuck,” he whispers, “No. No. Not again.”

But then his toilet flushes.

Josh steps out of his attached bathroom still looking half asleep, and Chris could kill him, but he’s still alive so he really can’t. And Josh’s eyes widen a little when he realizes Chris is still awake and he opens his mouth to say something but he can’t, because Chris is reaching up and pulling him down by the front of his shirt to kiss him.

After an unestablished and unremembered amount of time, Chris pulls away, apologizing profusely.

“Hey,” Josh says quietly, calmly, “I’m still here. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

Even so, Chris is still a shaky, uneven mess before finally regaining his breath, still pulling Josh in for the occasional kiss that Josh doesn’t seem to even slightly mind. Chris’ alarm tone ringing out ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ seems to pull them out of a trance and they both can’t help but laugh as Chris hits the button to stop it. Josh finally reciprocates with a peck to the corner of Chris’s mouth before stretching back out on the bed next to him.

When Josh finally looks at his phone, Chris rests his head on his shoulder. “What day is it?”

Josh looks at him sideways and grins, “It’s tomorrow.”


End file.
